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is using bass sims a big disadvantage for me?


mbengs1

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i can use my guitar to get bass sims from the effects built into my boss br-800. i can play pretty hard bass lines because its still a guitar neck i'm playing on. some of the bass lines i come up with are very quick and its pretty easy to play it on a guitar but on a bass it may be harder since the space between the frets is larger and the strings are much thicker.

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Arranging bass parts using a guitar could lead to creating some very uncharacteristic sounding bass parts. The size of a bass neck and fret spacing does have an impact on how a bass would be played. I would suggest using a real bass or work with a bass player. The tone is also a lot different, no matter how great the simulator is. I've tried tweaking these things in the past, a guitar simulating a bass usually ends up sounding a bit on the hollow side. That same robust tone just isn't there.

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The thickness of bass strings create an inertia that cannot be faked electronically using an octave effect. You can sound like a bass player with a midi guitar but its not going to feel like a bass and therefore you'll never capture the groove a bass player has for the notes. A guitar and bass both have strings and look similar but that's as far as it goes.

 

To play bass and sound like a bassist you simply have to play an actual bass. There is no substitute. A guitarist feels his strings as much as he hears them. Same goes for a bassist or any other musician who plays an acoustic based instrument, acoustic piano included . Making the leap to an electronic version robs you of the key elements that give the music a life and a groove. The satisfaction levels of doing it synthetically are much lower and it nearly always shows in the results.

 

Of course you would know this if you played a real bass. The difference is like driving a small car vs a truck. You cant imagine yourself driving a truck if you've never done it. A small car doesn't have the weight or inertia a truck does and you don't have to compensate in the same ways when driving.

 

Don't feel bad. Many bassists have a hard time playing guitar too. It takes many years of hard work learning to be accomplished on multiple instruments. Even when you've done it it takes constant practice to maintain it.

 

I pulled out my Mini Moog the other day and tuned it up. I hadn't played it in a year and talk about being rusty. I had to spend about 4 hours getting the voices tuned up and hand hands limbered up. Then I recorded for about 3 hours on two songs.

 

Haven't listened to it since I recorded it but I don't think there was much there worth keeping. I'd feel the same way faking bass on guitar. I've used it a couple of times as a novelty but it's not the same thing so don't fool yourself into thinking it is.

 

If you really learn how to play bass well speed isn't the issue either. I can wail notes on a bass the same way as I do on guitar but other then some unique solo parts or tight riffs, its not the role of the instrument. Bass is what most people feel when they listen to music, not hear. You do things for people in the subconscious realm they may not ever realize - that is unless you're botching it badly and trying to fake what a bassist does - then you're be noticed for sure in a very unflattering way.

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The bottom line here is that it isn't going to sound like a bass guitar. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I say that as a bass player. Good sounding bass lines can and have been done with tubas, keyboards, strings, even voices. No reason a good bass line couldn't be done with a guitar and an effect. But it isn't going to sound like a bass guitar, for the reasons others have stated.

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The bottom line here is that it isn't going to sound like a bass guitar. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and I say that as a bass player. Good sounding bass lines can and have been done with tubas, keyboards, strings, even voices. No reason a good bass line couldn't be done with a guitar and an effect. But it isn't going to sound like a bass guitar, for the reasons others have stated.

 

​(awaits good sounding bass track on tuba)

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